


Aftermath

by Axis2ClusterB



Series: Anywhere But Here [3]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-04
Updated: 2012-11-04
Packaged: 2017-11-17 17:26:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/554093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Axis2ClusterB/pseuds/Axis2ClusterB
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Remus feels as though he's spent his life losing Sirius.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Aftermath

**Author's Note:**

> Set post-veil.

It hasn’t hurt yet.

That surprises him more than anything, pulls him up short at least once a day. He doesn’t look for Sirius this time, isn’t watching the doors for him, isn’t hearing the pounding of his booted feet on the stairs or his laugh echoing around the kitchen.

Not that there was a lot of laughter in the last month or so anyway.

He hasn’t had the breakdown that everyone seems to expect yet, either. He’s in one piece and it seems to be slowly calming to everyone around him. They don’t understand that it’s because he doesn’t feel anything, and they’ve started to breathe a little easier, although Tonks and Molly still watch him too closely.

Sighing, Remus sets his quill on the kitchen table and rubs at his burning eyes. He’s been at this translation for the last three days, and he’s still not sure if he’s got the Latin right all through. It’s some weird dialect that he’s never come in contact with, something harsh and hard to wrap his brain around, but that’s usually the way with Dark Magic.

“Remus?”

He starts a little, looks to the kitchen door and Molly, smiles for her. She doesn’t return it, and he knows that’s something he’s going to have to work harder on, his smile looking like it’s a part of him. “Going home?” he asks, and she nods, coming to sit beside him.

“In a bit. I wanted to talk to you first, though. I… Remus, are you *sure* you’re all right? You’ve been so quiet,” she says, and Remus sighs. Still tiptoeing around it, so careful not to mention Sirius’s name and never mind that they’re all surrounded by him in this tomb of a house.

“What would you have me say, Molly, really?” Remus asks tiredly, putting down his quill. “How am I meant to be handling this? Because I’m obviously doing something wrong, but I don’t know how else to act, how else to *be.* So you tell me, Molly. You tell me.”

“It’s just that it’s been three weeks,” Molly says, and the look on her face hints that she heartily wishes she’d just said her goodbyes and left, rather than bring the subject up, “and you haven’t… you haven’t talked about it. About him. Sirius. Even at the wake you were so quiet.”

The memory of that night is still enough to make Remus clench up in anger. So close to the full moon, the mere presence of Severus Snape at Sirius’s wake had kept so much pure rage simmering just under the placid surface Remus had worked so hard to keep in place that it was necessary to maintain almost total silence, for fear that he wouldn’t be able to control what came out of his mouth, but Molly doesn’t need to know that. “There’s been so much to do,” is what he says instead, reaching for the wine bottle just above his books, even though he’s fully aware that he’s been doing a bit too much of that lately. “Helping get Tonks back on her feet, sorting the Dursleys out for Harry, and now these translations. It’s been busy.”

Her lips compress into a thin line, her face drawing into the lines of what Sirius used to call her ‘mother Ridgeback’ face. “That doesn’t mean that there’s no time for you to take care of yourself, Remus. You can’t just push everyone away and say it’s because you’re busy.”

“Merlin’s beard, Molly, you act as though I’ve never dealt with death before,” Remus says, his voice tight. The anger is rising again, and he pushes it down, away. “I’m not pushing anyone away, and besides, how is surrounding myself with people who didn’t know him or didn’t understand him supposed to help me? You want me to talk to you about Sirius? Molly, you barely even tolerated him, and you want me to— oh, this is useless. I’m fine. I’m taking care of myself, and I am fine.”

“But isn’t this different?” she presses, even though her voice is almost timid now, faced with this fierce and closed Remus that she’s never seen and it occurs to him that she doesn’t know him, either. “You and Sirius, it was different. More, I mean.”

Remus just stares at her for a minute, then laughs, and the sound is jagged, bitter, like it must be scraping his throat bloody. “Sometimes, Molly, I feel that I’ve spent my life losing Sirius. I’m fine.”

“It’s different now, though,” she insists. “I mean, he’s…”

“Dead?” Remus prompts. “You can say it, I won’t break. And to my way of thinking, he was dead when he went to Azkaban for giving James and Lily to Voldemort. There was no hope left in my heart then, either. At least now, I don’t have to feel guilt over still loving him, too.”

She reaches for his hand, and Remus pulls away, just the thought of bare skin against his sending something very much like panic through him. She sighs heavily, then manages a small smile for him. “Well, I know that Bill’s mentioned this to you before, but I thought that I might, too. We have plenty of room at the Burrow, if you decide that you’d like a change of scene.”

Remus nods, says, “That’s very kind of you, Molly,” even though he knows as well as she that he’ll never take her up on it.

“I’ll be going then, Remus. Unless you need me?” Remus is already shaking his head, already bending back to the translation in front of him.

12 Grimmauld Place feels no emptier after she Apparates out than it did while she was in it. Remus waits until the wine is gone before he goes upstairs, to the bed that he used to share with Sirius.

He doesn’t sleep, and the wine doesn’t help. He just processes it too fast for it to actually make him pass out, although it does seem to stay with him long enough to make him melancholy. He lies in the too-big bed and does what he does every night, lets his mind drift, lets it take him away. 

Tonight’s trip seems to be the night that it all happened, the night that Sirius went through the veil. Bellatrix’s face, Sirius’s voice, Harry’s screams. Tonks in St. Mungo’s, her face, her *real* face, drawn tight and pale with pain. Remus at the end of it all, wandering through the house alone, finally realizing that he was looking for Sirius, and in a place where he had never really lived.

Remus doesn’t sleep. He relives his memories, and waits for it to hurt.

-End


End file.
